Under experienced and undertrained management, can make your life a misery!!!HR more interested in brushing problems under the caret than to try and sort anything out. This alone would be a reason to avoid working in this office.Big issues between the EU and US, very much a turf war. Felt like the Dublin office was the child stuck in the middle of two fighting parents.No career opportunities, forget moving up the ladder unless you want to move out of the country

Advice to ManagementAdvice

Train your managers.From the management reviews of managers actually take action when they are been ranked low and not ignore it.Start promoting on results and not who's the group heads favouriteWhen issues arise take action and don't ignore them

Lofty but achievable goals, driven by innovation, working with some of the worlds best technolgists. They will provide what you want and need to be innovative.

Cons

"Not everyone can be successful" they say. Anyone at mastercard has heard this excuse time and time and time again.

To be "successful" or above, you have to stab your trusted co-workers in the back and constantly try to one-up the next guy, even if they too are trying to be successful. Favoratism rules - not quality of work. Are you a close friend of a Sr. business leader?...cool. You get ALL the rewards regardless of work output or ideas, or efforts! No worries. Do you have creative and innovative ideas...awesome! Just don't expect to get any credit or a raise or bonus for them because your manager will claim that for himself.

You simply can not get ahead without hurting someone else. Its a poor "statistics" based review policy and is so DE-motivating to me over the years that I had to leave. No matter how hard I tried, pushed the envelope, or got involved, follwed the promoted processes, did everything and everything I could think of... i couldnt get ahead.

Lastly - TOO many overseas contactors! Don't get me wrong, some of these guys are awesome -- but many (or MOST rather) can't hold their own to save their life, and when they do aquire a skill, they quit and go somewhere else. Complete waste of everyones time and company money. FTE's spend a lot of time covering for their mistakes and fixing what these "Teflon coated contractors" create. Not that we get any credit for it, but FTE's tend to do the work of 4 brain-dead, timeclock driven contractors. FTE's are results driven and most contractors only care about billable hours. Which would you rather have creating your next great product

Advice to ManagementAdvice

Non management employees work equally as hard and are completely on-board with MasterCard objectives. RECONGNIZE that with proper bonus and raises!! Good Technolgists are not "disposible" -- management is! When you recognize that ALL the new products and technical idea are created by a technogiest and NOT a manager -- then you'll be a better place to work. Until that happens, your an IT based sweat shop. Nothing more.

Work life balance (Depending on the role)Good salary & benefits (For full time staff)Interesting industry to be inStrong CEO

Cons

Inter-Department politicsWeak business processes - especially in HRTerrible career advancement opportunities & proper structureLimited training opportunities - only available to the interns or management associatesDoes not value the contract staff - no conversion opportunities. treated like 2nd rate staff on many frontsNo headcount when more people are obviously required toTop heavy structure - compromises on executionPassing over internal talent & hiring outside the company for senior positions

Good place to be in for 1.5 years, but I would recommend leaving unless you want to have a stable job and want to be a robot at MasterCard.

Cons

People expect to form business relationships instantly with an email before getting to know people. Communication within groups and divisions are terrible. No clear goals are set.

There is no career growth and very little pay at MasterCard. There are no "perks" at MasterCard Purchase office like other top technology companies.

Most people don't have a work-life balance.

Advice to ManagementAdvice

(1) train people how to manage people, be organized, and time management skills at levels. A lot of business leaders are terrible managers.

(2) marketing/branding at MA is a joke. I don't even get to experience or see the Priceless Surprises outside of work.

(3) culture change starts from the top. If people don't see executives participating in fun during the day, then we'll never be like Google.

(4) if people are working late in the office, can you please provide us food, or keep the cafeteria open late. We all know that people work late in the office, so why not make the experience enjoyable.

(5) Better laptops for employees...come on.

(6) why are people so scared to take vacation days at MasterCard. FOMO.

(7) cut the bs politics between groups. Seriously, there are too much duplicate efforts. Groups trying to outperform others on the same task. WTF.